Rhode Island Father Vows To Murder Man Who Killed/Ate His 5-Year-Old Son If Released From Prison...

Potential release sparks outrage
01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, March 8, 2011
By Tom Mooney
Providence Journal
Staff Writer
A day after The Providence Sunday Journal reported the scheduled early release of child-slayer Michael Woodmansee, hundreds of outraged readers called the offices of the state attorney general and Corrections Department on Monday demanding that the killer who shellacked the little boy’s bones remain behind bars.
Meanwhile, as John Foreman, the father of 5-year-old Jason Foreman, reiterated his intention to seek revenge –– telling a radio audience that if given a chance he would kill the “monster” who “ate the flesh of my son” –– Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin urged corrections officials to “consider all avenues” to keep Woodmansee confined.
The one avenue corrections officials are considering is having Woodmansee involuntarily committed to a secure psychiatric facility before his August release — if psychiatrists deem him mentally ill.
Only once before have corrections officials attempted to keep a potentially dangerous inmate confined after his release date: in 2006, the department started down the road to involuntarily commit serial rapist Todd McElroy.
But before a District Court judge could make a final decision, McElroy voluntarily committed himself.
Woodmansee, who served virtually all of the last 28 years in prisons in Massachusetts for his own protection, returned to Rhode Island last week.
“We made the decision to bring him back well in advance of the end of his term of incarceration because we wanted to fully explore what the options would be after his sentence ended,” said Corrections Director A.T. Wall. “The law allows in a certain narrow category, commitment for mental-health reasons.”
In 1975, Woodmansee, then 16, stabbed to death 5-year-old Jason Foreman who lived on the same Peace Dale village street in South Kingstown.
Authorities found the boy’s shellacked bones and skull in Woodmansee’s bedroom seven years later after Woodmansee tried to strangle the local paper boy and ended up confessing to killing Jason.
But in 1983, as part of a plea-bargain arrangement, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. A judge ordered him to serve 40 years of a 50-year sentence.
(As part of the plea arrangement, Woodmansee also received 10 years for assaulting the second boy. That term ran concurrently with the longer sentence.)
Because of a long-standing “good time” law, Woodmansee is coming up for release 12 years sooner than many people might have expected –– or seem willing to accept.
Under the earned good time law that Wall says has been on the books since 1960, Woodmansee regularly had 12 days a month subtracted from his sentence: 10 days for good behavior and 2 days for holding a prison job.
The rumor that Woodmansee had cannibalized Jason Foreman’s body has haunted South Kingstown ever since Woodmansee confessed to the killing that April day in 1982.
Patrick Strickland was a young new officer of the South Kingstown police force when he interrogated Woodmansee and helped gain his confession.
Strickland and former prosecutor Susan E. McGuirl, now a Superior Court judge, said last week that they doubted if Woodmansee ever admitted to police he had cannibalized the body, or that the detail was ever included in police reports.
The atrocity, however, is referenced in a form of journal Woodmansee wrote and which the police found when they searched his house. Woodmansee told the police the journal’s contents were fictional.
However, the detail was so explosive that Superior Court Judge Thomas H. Needham sealed all evidence in the case, including the journal, which has remained under lock and key with South Kingstown Police Chief Vincent Vespia.
Monday morning Vespia was on WPRO radio with John DePetro, speaking about the case, when John Foreman called in and told Vespia he should have the journal.
“I want to know all the facts,” Foreman said, explaining he wanted to kill Woodmansee in the same manner used to kill his son.
“If I can find him … I do intend to kill this man as aggressively, as painfully as he killed my son,” said John Foreman. “He ate the flesh of my son … before he cleaned the bones.”
Woodmansee was found competent to stand trial in 1982.
The civil-commitment law allows a petition for commitment to be filed in a state District Court by someone’s relatives or a variety of state officials, including the attorney general or the director of corrections.
The petitioner must show that someone’s “continued unsupervised presence in the community would create a likelihood of serious harm by reason of mental disability.”
As part of the process, two physicians must evaluate the inmate in an effort to meet the law’s standard of proof.
Wall said Woodmansee has only been in Rhode Island for a week and prison officials are still awaiting records from prisons in Massachusetts.
“We’ve just begun the process of assessing him and conducting psychiatric evaluations,” said Wall.

"My religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to always be ready, no matter when it may overtake me." Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, 1862.

Why does our government waste time on studying something like this or considering it at all? Is it to save money just to make space in the system for a newly caught animal... or has it become a money making scheme yet again where all outcomes rest on the backs of innocent citizens?
The revolving doors seem to be more about drumming up business and keeping public employees busy filling out paperwork, just so everyone in this horrendous loop can just keep right on doing what it is they do.
Including the animal we already paid enough I am sure, to have put away to keep our society safer from one more said animal.
There is no need nor good reason to continue the repetition processes. Our law enforcement and other such public employees touching these cases would be better left to locking up for good, the new cases presenting themselves plenty enough.
Its just like the circus evolving around the Arizona mass murdering that included a U.S. Representative. There is NO need to commit the millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars to try such a case in the fashions of popular culture entertainment.
Leave the circus acts for television and movies. Real life is certainly different.
It seems innocent citizenry continue to take all the costs and risks as animals and government dance a waltz together for each's benefit.
Its getting a bit tiresome. We continue to find we're all giving up everything in order to realize justice for what? Just to find its ordinary law abiding citizens that is REALLY losing their own liberty, privilege, pursuit and happiness?
Again.... created industries promoted just aren't producing anything that seems to be working right. There is something really wrong in all this.
The family should never have to think nor fear this animal is getting loose for any reason - NONE. BUT if that father did do such a deed? Of course our government would make sure he paid for the entirety of his life without any hope of getting out.
It is government that does itself the largest disservice because as it is working more and more, no good soul can trust it to do its function properly.

"In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst." C.S. Lewis

Blood is on the hands of all voters who elect liberal politicians that won't allow all murderers, rapists, and child molesters to be quickly executed.....I hope you're all very proud of the dangerous American society you created with your failure to punish violent criminals......Sowing, reaping.....